Celebrating famous female cannabis connoisseurs throughout herstory to the present day. All contents copyrighted. "Bright Leaf" artwork by Jean Hanamoto http://www.camomoto.com
Thursday, January 11, 2018
A Her-Storic Golden Globes Ceremony
Saturday, December 23, 2017
Top Ten Christmas Cultural References to Marijuana in Movies & TV
1. In the heartfelt 2005 film The Family Stone, Diane Keaton munches "special" brownies as the cancer-stricken family matriarch, and Sarah Jessica Parker plays the uptight Meredith, whose freak flag flies under the tutelage of her fiancé's brother Ben Stone (Been Stoned?), played by Luke Wilson.
2. The Night Before (2015) written by Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) and starring Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, features Dickensian pot dealer Mr. Green (Michael Shannon) manifesting marijuana's three vision quest abilities: to put you squarely in the present, to illuminate a future you fear, and to come to grips with a past you have buried. To the character who protests paranoia, Mr. Green replies, "Sometimes it's good to be uncomfortable." Packed with the usual party boy inanities, this one at least has cameos from Mindy Kaling and Ilana Glazer (Broad City) as Scrooge.
3. In Scrooged (1998), Bill Murray finds his soul with the help of his pot-puffing girlfriend, played by Karen Allen.
4. To deal with his sudden change in fortune, Eddie Murphy jumps into the john to take a toke, and Dan Aykroyd lights up a spliff in disguise as a Jamaican in Trading Places (1983), set at Christmastime.
5. In The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), the unwanted visitor's host is based on H.H. Timken, the Ohio industrialist who planned to bankroll hemp production in the US. Absinthe is mentioned.
6. In the 1951 movie The Lemon Drop Kid, Bob Hope sniffs Santa's pipe and pantomimes flying while singing the song "Silver Bells":
7. In Four Christmases (2008) where the always-hilarious Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon attempt to dodge their wacky relatives, Sissy Spacek warns her grandson against grandma's "special" brownies.
8. A Very Harold & Kumar 3-D Christmas (2011) must be mentioned. Best moment: when Danneel Harris (Vanessa) convinces Kumar not to stop smoking.
9. In Happy Christmas (2014) Anna Kendrick (pictured) plays an insecure woman who puffs pot from a joint and a pipe, and does fine unless she mixes it with alcohol. It's not very Christmassy, insightful, or fun, but Kendrick is good (as always).
10. A tie between the 2008 ER episode, "The High Holiday," which features Charlotte Rea (who played the housemother TV’s staid sitcom "The Facts of Life") accidentally dosing the staff at their Christmas party with her pot brownies, made for a friend in chemotherapy. And the 2009 Friends episode in which Monica is baking Christmas cookies, and Phoebe comments, "A plate of brownies once told me a limerick." "Were those funny brownies?" she is asked. "Not especially," is her response, "but you know what, I think they had pot in them."
And for you kids in town without a Christmas tree, the "smoke your marijuanaka" line in Adam Sandler's original Hanukkah Song always gets a big ovation whenever he performs it live. His newest version #4 of the song shows he's still smokin:
UPDATE 12/2019: In 2020 look for "High Holiday," the plot of which is (according to IMDB): "In order to lighten up her uptight family, the free-spirited daughter of a conservative politician brings weed-infused salad dressing to Christmas Eve dinner. With Tom Arnold, Jennifer Tilly, Cloris Leachman and Shannyn Sossamon.
Friday, December 15, 2017
2017 Tokey Awards
Tokin' Woman of the Year: Kathy Bates
Asked by the New York Times if she smokes pot, Bates replied, "Yeah, I do. I’ve had a prescription for some time for chronic pain. I’ve really become a believer. I find it just as, if not more, effective than other pain relief." She also said she supports legalization "even more so now that I’ve become more educated about what its properties are" and mentioned meeting NFL players in the Gridiron Cannabis Coalition.
AARP Magazine's headline was Kathy Bates: She's Smokin', and Stephen Colbert introduced her as "an Academy Award–winning actress who terrified us in Misery, inspired us in Titanic, and now she sells us weed on the Netflix show Disjointed." She demonstrated her technique for using a vape pen for Stephen, and gifted Chelsea Handler with a cannabis wrist corsage for her interview on Chelsea.
Bates also played a marijuana-smoking lawyer in the 2011-12 TV series "Harry's Law," and portrayed Alice B. Toklas's lover Gertrude Stein on film in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris." In 2014 she said she'd shared "some good sh##" with Susan Sarandon and Melissa McCarthy.
Gotta say, though, having just seen Bates in "The Great Gilly Hopkins" (2015), it made me wish the writing for cannabis-themed movies and TV could approach a great film like that one.
Outie of the Year
Olivia Newton-John
Gwynneth Paltrow
Anne Hathaway
Admission of the Year
“It’s never fun to work in drug prevention,” said Drug Free America’s Deputy Director Amy Ronshausen.
Top Activist
Peachtree NORML founder Sharon Ravert (pictured at right with members of the NC Women and others) lobbied to bring the Drug Policy Alliance conference to Atlanta this year. Just before the event, Atlanta, which had the worst-in-the-nation record for arresting blacks over whites for marijuana, passed a decriminalization measure. NORML is working to pass more reform measures throughout Georgia and Sharon produces a segment on 420radio.com highlighting the stories and work of other women in the fight to end marijuana prohibition.Honorable mentions
Alexis Bortell - 12-year-old suing Sessions over marijuana policy
In Peru, mothers rouse support for legalizing medical marijuana
Women could push marijuana legalization across the finish line in Texas
Political She-Ro Award
Elizabeth Warren Wants Marijuana Answers From Trump Health Nominee and Seeks to Pull Pot Shops Out of Banking Limbo
New York Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal introduces bill to allow cannabis for menstrual cramps
Harwell Open to Medical Marijuana Law in Tennessee
Kamala Harris to Trump: Leave Grandma's Marijuana Alone
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard on the future of marijuana legalization
Minister of Women and Child Development in India Wants Medical Cannabis
Best Commentary (Written)
NORML Women of Washington: Profit vs. access on Facebook, our digital town square
Best Commentary (TV)
Samantha Bee Rips Jeff Sessions
John Oliver on MJ Legalization
Bill Maher: Opiate of the Masses Now Officially Opiates (and Booze)
Dr. Oz Shocks "Fox & Friends"
Funniest TV Moment
The Daily Show: Roy on Drugs
Saturday Night Live: Leslie Jones's Jamaican Vacation
Russell Brand on His Favorite (and non-favorite) Drugs
Kathryn Hahn's Wake and Bake on "I Love Dick"
Family Feud Contestant Wins with Weed
Phattest Film
Mary Janes: The Women of WeedGirls Trip
The Only Living Boy in New York
Best Video or Series
Kelsey Darragh: I Tried Medical Marijuana For 30 DaysTo See If It Could Cure My Chronic Pain
Damian Marley: Meet Medical Cannabis Patient Michelle Aldrich
Now This: This Grandma Wants You to Smoke Weed
Nohttps://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/947211465949188096
Merry Jane: Queens of the Stoned Age
Best Commercial
Martha Stewart and Snoop Dog: T-Mobile Super Bowl Ad
Top Tweets (Politicos)
Tulsi Gabbard
Dina Titus
Kirsten Gillibrand
Julia Brownley
Kamala Harris
Top Tweets (Entertainers)
Paula Poundstone
Elayne Boosler
Susan Sarandon
Best Album
Best Musical Moment
Sheryl Crow wailing on the harmonica to Willie Nelson's "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die" at Farm Aid
Best Dance Moment
Stella Abrera performing "Soul Bossa Nova/Dear Quincy" (with pipe) in tribute to Carmen de Lavallade at the Kennedy Center Honors. See Carmen dancing it.
Best Book
Ashley Picillo & Lauren Devine: Breaking The Grass Ceiling: Women, Weed and BusinessDebby Goldsberry: Starting and Running a Marijuana Business
Ayelet Waldman: A Really
Good Day
Paula Poundstone: The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness
Excellence in Reporting
Amanda Chicago Lewis: Medical Pot Is Our Best Hope to Fight the Opioid Epidemic
Paul Armentano, NORML: Blowing the Lid Off the "Marijuana Treatment" Racket
Sofia Miselem, AFP: 'Grandma's magic remedy:' Mexico's medical marijuana secret
Tom Angell, The Marijuana Moment: Teen Marijuana Use Down In Most Legalized States, Federal Data Says
Brooke Edwards Staggs: The Cannifornian
Best Interview
Arnie Cooper, The Sun - Hooked: Maia Szalavitz Debunks Myths About Addiction
Best Public Art
Hollyweed Sign
"I Thought the KKK was OK" (pictured)
Best Speech
Diane Goldstein accepting the H.B. Spear Award for Achievement in the Field of Law Enforcement at the Drug Policy Alliance Conference.Kathleen Harrison: Cannabis and Spirituality
Best Event
Women's Visionary Congress: Women and Cannabis Salon
Best Billboard
The "moving hand" billboard on Sunset Strip for Disjointed. (See it moving at night.)Top Studies
Cannabis and pregnancy: Maternal child health implications during a period of drug policy liberalization
People Who Smoke Weed Have 20 Percent More Sex
Women Who Smoke Marijuana Are Smarter Than Women Who Don't
Delaying marijuana smoking to age 17 cuts risks to teens' brains, new study suggests
Medical Marijuana for Children with Cancer? What Providers Think
Middle-aged women prescribed the most opioids, report finds
Children More Likely to Overdose If Mothers Are Prescribed Opioids
Energy Drinks Are a Gateway to Cocaine and Alcohol
States of Shame
Kansas Jails Cancer-Stricken Grandmother for Driving After Taking Anti-Nausea Drug
Proposed Wyoming Bill Equates Giving Substances Like Cannabis to Pregnant Women as Homicide
Alabama's crackdown on pregnant marijuana users
One North Texas Mother Convicted of Five Felonies for Breastfeeding One Child on Pot
Texas Cops Spent 11 Minutes Searching a Woman's Vagina, Found No Drugs
"What Were They Smoking?" Award
Ann Coulter: Marijuana use is “destroying the country”
Sen. McCaskill: If Pot is Legal "Kids Will Get Handed Joints Like They Get Handed Beers"
Rob Portman Claims MJ Laced with Fentanyl
Himachal Pradesh local women destroy cannabis plantations
Feds block a product aimed at keeping drugs out of kids’ hands
Feds Authorized Montana Woman's Hemp Farm, but Now They're Killing It
Marijuana legalization and gay activist Gilbert Baker, who designed the Rainbow Flag |
A Fond Farewell To:
Gilbert BakerChuck Berry
David Cassidy
Hugh Hefner
Joanne Kyler
Joanna McKee
Roger Moore
Mary Tyler Moore
Jeanne Moreau
Tom Petty
Anita Pallenberg
Jacki Rickert
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Why Does Jerry Brown Keep Insulting Potheads?
Brown continued, "[Colorado Gov. John] Hickenlooper says it's working pretty good. He has more experience. I would say the devotion and the zeal of the marijuana people is extraordinary. And far exceeds the mainline church community's, as I encounter it."
Is this more distancing by Brown from his "Governor Moonbeam" image? As Jessica Mitford recorded in a letter on April 23, 1992, SF Chronicle columnist Herb Caen joked that while Bill Clinton claimed he didn't inhale, Jerry Brown had never exhaled. Johnny Carson repeated the joke.
In 1992, I had just learned about the hemp/marijuana connection, from a guy who'd taken me to a Brown for President campaign event for our first date. Inspired by Jerry's reason and passion, I decided to delve back into politics, both as a hemp activist (mainly for environmental reasons) and as a volunteer for Brown's presidential campaign. Far from being a lazy so-and-so who didn't care about important issues, I was working around the clock: at my paying job, as well as on my two nonpaying political causes.
My fellow hemp/Brown activists and I tried advising his staff that he ought to make light of the accusations, but instead he issued a blistering response, calling them "false, malicious and absurd" and "part of the Gong Show of presidential politics."
He'd allowed himself to be put on the defensive, and never recovered. Clinton emerged as the front runner, and Brown had to reinvent his career, first as Mayor of Oakland and California Attorney General before being reelected as Governor.
Does Brown blame marijuana for the demise of his 1992 campaign? At least he now acknowledges that cannabis activists are a committed bunch, although he thinks we're too stoned all the time to care about important issues like global warming. I've been a cannabis activist ever since and would like nothing better than for its persecution to end so that I could work on other causes, like voting rights or environmental issues.
I'd warrant that marijuana smokers are in general more aware and active in greater causes than are, say, beer or wine enthusiasts. In fact a booklet published for parents in 1998 by the Salt Lake Education Foundation, featuring a forward by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, included "excessive preoccupation with social causes, race relations, environmental issues, etc." as a warning sign of marijuana use. Interestingly enough, Hatch has now introduced a sweeping medical marijuana research bill.
To his credit, Brown signed the bill to decriminalize marijuana in California in 1975 during his first term. Recently, he signed a bill legalizing hemp farming in California (but only after it was amended to only make it legal once the feds did). He also approved a bill ending the practice of kicking medical marijuana patients off organ transplant lists in 2015. But in California, people can still lose their jobs for using marijuana, even with a doctor's recommendation, and cannabis-using patients are routinely kicked off their prescription medications, forced instead onto more dangerous opiate drugs. [These last two changed years years after Brown's RS interview, in bills signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.]
Update 6/18: Journalist Sy Hersch recalls smoking pot with Eugene McCarthy and Brown in 1968. “The stuff did little for McCarthy, so he said, but it did much more for Brown,” Mr. Hersh writes. Again, Brown denies.
9/18: He's done it again.
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Penny Marshall on Pot
Marshall as Laverne (to Cindy Williams's Shirley) |
After studying dance and appearing in musical theatre in her youth, Marshall decided to move to Los Angeles with some fellow cast members. She writes:
"On the night before we left, Bill, Randy, and I went to the drive-in and saw The Trip, director Roger Corman's movie abut a TV director who takes LSD and goes on a mind-bending journey. Bill lit up a joint, and I smoked pot for the first time. It didn't even make me hungry."
Marshall says she liked Reiner because he "wore pajamas and didn't do drugs. His wild days were behind him." But after they married, "our house becomes a hangout for comedy's elite," naming Albert Brooks, Jerry Belson, Billy Crystal, Richard Dreyfuss, and Charles Grodin, among others.
"These were the pot-smoking years, and a lot of it was smoked at our house," she writes. "I cleaned the seeds and stems in a shoebox top. It was a skill, and I was good at it." Women weren't invited into the club. Belson would interrupt Brooks's comedy routines to say, "Can we take a break and smoke a joint?" and Brooks would get the munchies so badly he would eat Marshall's daughter's brown bag lunch meant for school the next day.
She mentions smoking cigarettes frequently, a habit she started while still in junior high. While working with Steven Speilberg, "I tried to get a Quaalude in him. They were my drug of choice. I constantly joked about wanting to know what he would be like if he relaxed."
Once, she flushed a bag of heroin down the toilet when her friend John Belushi offered it to her. "I had tried heroin once. It made me carsick," she wrote. "Artie [Garfunkel] didn't like it either, thank God. When others were chipping on the weekends, he was my ally in not doing it, and I will always be grateful to him for giving me the wherewithal to keep saying no. I wish John had done the same."
Marshall became one of the most successful female film directors ever, starting with directing Whoopi Goldberg (pictured) in Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986), followed by Big with Tom Hanks, and Oliver Sacks's Awakenings with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. I thought it was brilliant that for Big she had the actor who played Hanks's younger self act out all the scenes so that Hanks could see what a boy looked like in them; it was also interesting to learn that DeNiro almost played his role.
I particularly enjoyed her description of directing A League of Their Own, the first women's baseball movie. She tells how she cast and re-cast the film, getting Madonna to try out on the baseball field, and standing her ground to keep the ending with the "old women" of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, for whom she says she made the movie. League was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2012. The film celebrated its 25th anniversary on July 1 (with a new Blu-ray edition).
After surviving lung cancer that metastasized to her brain, Marshall gained weight and turned to her friend Carrie Fisher, then a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig. "Thirty years earlier we had dropped acid," she writes. "Now we were microwaving our Jenny meals. What had we become?"
Up next from Marshall: Between the Pipes, the story of Manon Rhéaume, the only woman to play for the NHL, and the story of Dennis Rodman, due out in 2018.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Hugh Hefner: Drug War Foe
Gloria Steinem in her Playboy Bunny costume, 1963 |
As a feminist, I can't say he was a hero of mine. I read Gloria Steinem's undercover description of what it was like to be a Playboy Bunny, and it wasn't pretty. On the other hand, he supported a woman's right to choose.
Hefner stood up for the First Amendment in more ways than the obvious one: publishing an interview with Malcom X lead to his first obscenity trial. He also helped get NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) off the ground with a donation and editorial support, and later held fundraisers for the Marijuana Policy Project at the Playboy mansion (hostessed in 2009 by Adrianne Curry and Fairuza Balk).
It was also in Playboy where former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders commented about then-Health and Human Secretary Donna Shalala's indefensible stance against medical marijuana, saying, "She has a Ph.D. in political science. That's the kind of science she practices." Bill Gates outed himself as an LSD user in Playboy, and Rush Limbaugh told the magazine in 1993 he smoked pot only twice in his life and it made him nauseous. (Others dispute the claim.)
I recently viewed the Amazon biopic series on Hefner, produced by Playboy Enterprises. It surprised me by revealing that his first girlfriend cheated on him with another man, devastating him and causing him to question monogamy. (So he acted as Shahryar did?) Episode 6 addresses Playboy's commitment to civil liberties, heightened by the hiring of editor Arthur Kretchmer, who's interviewed recalling, "Some of us were smoking dope." (Meanwhile, Hef was downing prescription Dexedrine to keep up with his grueling schedule.)
Episode 8 details the unjust drug arrest of Hef's close friend and associate Bobbie Arnstein, who committed suicide after receiving a 15-year prison sentence. Hefner was in tears when he read a statement condemning the US Government for hounding Bobbie to death. But it's also thought that she was troubled over an inferiority complex heightened by constant comparison with the Bunny Brigade.
Of course Hefner owed his success to the women who willingly graced the pages of Playboy over the years. The Marilyn Monroe estate's Twitter feed reminded us that she helped launch Playboy, by appearing on its first cover. Inside was that classic, exuberant nude of her, taken years earlier and purchased by Hef from a calendar publisher for $800.
The early centerfolds were quite beautiful, I thought, but I can't look at them today: each one has the same, unnatural body (no hips and oversized boobs; worse, little or no pubic hair). The biopic also reveals how competition from other girlie magazines forced Playboy into rancher realms.
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
The Goop on Gwyneth: She's a Vaper
“What’s really interesting to see, with all the legalization of marijuana happening, is how there’s evidence that it can be helpful in a medicinal sense for people,” she said. “That it can really be an alternative pain management system, and, in some cases, helpful for depression.
After saying, “Oh, I’ve tried it, and yes, I inhaled!” she sang the praises of her hmbldt brand vape pen, which is “apparently very tailored in terms of its balance of THC and CBD. So, there’s one that’s for arousal, there’s one that’s for calm, there’s one that’s for pain relief, there’s one for sleep. And you don’t, like when you were a teenager, smoke pot and get blazed out of your mind.”
Famous (and often ridiculed) for her ultraclean lifestyle, Paltrow is the daughter of the also-luminous Blythe Danner, who starred in 2015's I’ll See You in My Dreams, featuring a pot party followed by a munchie run with Rhea Perlman, Mary Kay Place and June Squibb (pictured).
In a career that has spanned Jane Austin to Austin Powers, Paltrow won a much-deserved Oscar for her role in Shakespeare in Love, in which she played a woman pretending to be a man in order to appear on stage, a nice twist. She has authored two cookbooks and just opened a Goop store.
Gwyneth admitting to marijuana use will no doubt spawn jokes along the lines of, “This explains why she named her daughter Apple.” With more and more revelations like hers, it won’t be long before marijuana is as American as Apple Pie.